The religious critique against the Copernican worldview in Greece from 1794 to 1821: Aspects of Greek-Orthodox apologetics regarding the progress of the natural sciences

  1. Lemma
  2. Die religiöse Kritik am kopernikanischen Weltbild in Griechenland zwischen 1794 und 1821: Aspekte griechisch-orthodoxer Apologetik angesichts naturwissenschaftlicher Fortschritte
  3. English
  4. Koutalis, Vangelis
  5. Conflict - Orthodox critique of science - Westernism and anti-westernism - Culture and national identities - Orthodox theological tradition and practice > Premodern _modern_ postmodern - History and philosophy of science
  6. 28-11-2018
  7. Makrides, Vasilios [Author]. The religious critique against the Copernican worldview in Greece from 1794 to 1821: Aspects of Greek-Orthodox apologetics regarding the progress of the natural sciences
  8. Die religiöse Kritik am kopernikanischen Weltbild in Griechenland zwischen 1794 und 1821: Aspekte griechisch-orthodoxer Apologetik angesichts naturwissenschaftlicher Fortschritte : Tübinger Beiträge zur Religionswissenschaft 2 - Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995.
  9. Copernicus - de Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier - Makraios, Sergios - Theory of the Plurality of Worlds - Bible narrative of Creation - biblical tradition - Brahe, Tycho
    1. <p>Makrides, Vasilios (1995). <em>Die religiöse Kritik am kopernikanischen Weltbild in Griechenland zwischen 1794 und 1821: Aspekte griechisch-orthodoxer Apologetik angesichts naturwissenschaftlicher Fortschritte</em>. Tübinger Beiträge zur Religionswissenschaft 2. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.</p>

    1. This is a book dedicated to the criticisms launched by Greek Orthodox scholars, at the end of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth century, against both the heliocentric cosmological theory articulated by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), and the theory of the plurality of worlds, as propounded by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757), an influential French exponent and popularizer of the new natural sciences and even more specifically of the Copernican cosmology.

      The Copernican theory started to become an object of discussion, and possible controversy, in the Ottoman scholarly milieus in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, through an Ottoman translation (made in 1685) of the Theatrum orbis terrarum, sive Novus atlas, a world atlas prepared by the mapmaker and publisher Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), originally published in 1635 and republished in an expanded six-volume version in 1638-1655. A Greek polemical letter responding to the “insults and calumnies of the French Claude [i.e. the Protestant preacher Jean Claude (1619-1687)] against the Greeks”, written by Nektarios (1602-1676), Patriarch of Jerusalem, some time around the year 1672, an excerpt of which was published by Eusèbe Renaudot (1646-1720) in 1709, is indicative of the line of thought that provided the main tenets in the arguments of the opponents of the Copernican system, at the end of the following century. Nektarios discarded the Copernican cosmology as part of a whole set of innovations associated with the Reformation that brought the heavens and the earth upside down and negated the authoritative Christian truth as expressed in the biblical texts.

      In 1797, Sergios Makraios (1734/1739 -1819), a professor at the Patriarchal School of Constantinople, published in Vienna an essay against the Copernican cosmology consisting of three dialogues, under the title of Τρόπαιον ἐκ τῆς ἑλλαδικῆς πανοπλίας κατὰ τῶν ὀπαδῶν τοῦ Κοπερνίκου (“Trophy of the Greek panoply against the followers of Copernicus”. Makraios’ attack was openly backed by upper-echelon officials of the Orthodox Church, and his criticism was grounded on the belief that the revealed truth of the Scriptures should be treated as an incontrovertible guide for natural philosophy, as well as on the assumption that the direct evidence of the senses should overrule any attempts at theoretical innovation based on human conceptualizations of the world. Fontenelle’s theory on the plurality of the worlds fell also within the scope of Makraios’ “Trophy”. Panayiotes Kodrikas (1762-1827) had translated and published, in 1794, Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (originally published in 1686). Makraios saw both in the Copernican system and in Fontenelle’s theory a repudiation of the authority of the Scriptures fuelled by the strong intellectual proclivities towards innovation that had become dominant in the West. The existing Orthodox Church, more over, was depicted as the sole guardian not only of the salvatory message of the Bible, but also of the integrity of the genuinely sound elements inherent in the ancient Greek philosophical tradition.

      Apart from Makraios’ followers, there were certain more moderate representatives of a religiously informed criticism against the Copernican system, and few proponents of the heliocentric cosmology too. Eugenios Voulgaris (1716-1806), one of the most prominent Greek-speaking philosophers, as the Enlightenment movement was expanding in the SE Europe, in his cosmological lectures, delivered throughout the 1740s and the 1750s, at Greek schools in Ioannina and Kozani, in the Athonite Academy, and in the Patriarchal School of Constantinople, which were published in 1805 under the title Περὶ τοῦ συστήματος τοῦ παντός (“On the system of the universe”), sided with the compromise geo-heliocentric system proposed by Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). His attitude towards modern philosophy and modern scientific thinking was eclectic, and his openness to new ideas and new ways of philosophizing always dependent upon his religious faith. The proponents of the heliocentric cosmology, such as Veniamin Lesvios (1759-1824), a scholar who taught philosophy, mathematics, and the new physics, at the schools of Kydonies, Bucharest and Smyrna, tried to avoid direct conflict over the issue of the authority of the biblical texts over natural philosophy, either by advocating an allegorical interpretation of the biblical texts or by rendering religion apart from natural philosophy, as two separate domains, the one being externally profitable for the other.

                 

      The controversies over the Copernican cosmology and the theory of the plurality of the worlds within the Greek-Orthodox cultural context are not radically dissimilar to the controversies over the same questions that took place in the West during the sixteenth and the seventeenth century, but also well into the nineteenth century. In both cases we can find resembling patterns of argumentation, polarizations, and intellectual attitudes. There are, however, some peculiarities in the Greek-Orthodox apologetics that can be singled out. Modern scientific thinking was regarded as irrevocably Western, and linked to the principal deviations from the genuine Christian principles for which Catholicism, and generally Western Christianity, was held accountable. The ancient Greek philosophy, on the other side, especially the philosophical heritage of Aristotle, was positively evaluated as an actual component of the Orthodox spirituality. The Greek-Orthodox opponents of the Copernican cosmology considered themselves to be heirs of a cultural tradition, and defenders of an established social order, as well, in which the Orthodox Church was a central institution, that could be fatally endangered by the dissemination of philosophical innovations originating from cultural settings that were judged to be intrinsically alien, socially unquiet, and susceptible to theological and philosophical fallacies. The specific characteristics of the social and economic framework within which the actors in these controversies lived, should also be taken into account. The Orthodox Church exerted strong control over scientific education, whereas a vigorous merchant middle class, who could provide support to, or even promote, changes in intellectual habits, emerged only around the middle of the eighteenth century.